Jun. 22, 2014

John Vanperson and Pamela McIlwain were married Saturday. / David Stih/For The Eagle-Gazette

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The Eagle-Gazette Staff

Reverend Renagade(aka Bill Sanders) with John van Person and Pamela McIlwain , Saturday at the fairgrounds. David Stih/Eagle-Gazette

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LANCASTER — It’s not often that someone dies and comes back to life.

John Vanperson, 60, was offered that second chance after going about 40 minutes without a pulse. Now that he’s nearing a six-month milestone in what is expected to be a yearlong recovery process, Vanperson was finally able to marry Pamela McIlwain, who held him as he was dying outside his Lancaster home.

“He looked at me and took his last breath and a tear came out of his eye and he just died,” McIlwain said.

The couple had just purchased a home last November and were planning to be married when Vanperson had a massive heart attack Dec. 27, delaying their plans. McIlwain, 49, said the heart attack should have killed him.

“That’s a long time to go without the right amount of oxygen being pumped to his brain,” McIlwain said. “We didn’t know if he was going to live. The doctors expected him to wind up in a vegetative state. They were really blown away by (his progress). The doctor said he had never seen anyone recover like that.”

Now that Vanperson has undergone six months of physical, occupational and speech therapy, the couple decided to finally marry and pick up where their lives left off.

Vanperson and McIlwain were married after the Earth Angels Poker Run through the Lancaster Ohio Bikers Organization, of which they are members, Saturday night at the Fairfield County Fairgrounds.

Vanperson still struggles with short-term memory loss but is making progress. McIlwain said it was that memory loss that halted their wedding plans.

“I didn’t want him to forget ... that we got married,” she said. “I wanted him to focus on getting better.

“He still doesn’t remember buying the house and he doesn’t remember November or December of last year. Just a week ago, he remembered Christmas Day with his grandkids,” she said, which was two days before the heart attack.

McIlwain said doctors determined Vanperson’s heart attack was caused by the buildup of plaque in his heart’s main artery because of a 40-year addiction to smoking.

Because of the heart attack, Vanperson was forced into early retirement from Ryder. McIlwain said not working might be the most difficult consequence of the heart attack.

“That’s all he’s done since the age of 16. He’s a hard worker,” she said. “He’s a bullheaded person, and that fight in him has kept him going. I keep telling him that, if we can survive this, we can survive a lot of things.”